Ireland Family

This section of the website hold details of the Ireland families of Cumberland, Middleton Teesdale, Bowes and Skeeby as well as descendants who emigrated to Halton County, Canada.

Those early Ireland family members making their home in Middleton-in-Teesdale made the short move over the Northern Pennines from Cumberland around the turn of the 18th Century from villages and towns such as Hesket-in-the-Forest, Hutton-in-the-Forest and Penrith. Unfortunately the church records for the first two places noted are fragmented and annoyingly commence late about the year 1662 so there are missing generations before the line reconnects with William Ireland whose death is recorded in Penrith in 1557 and was likely born about the year 1500 and therefore the earliest recorded ancestor to this family line at least.

From the family trees for Cumberland produced with the available data it has been possible to identify at least eight male Ireland individuals and five female individuals who were born just before the church records commenced in 1662. The male Ireland's from Hesket-in-the-Forest are Hugh, John, Thomas, Richard and Anthony. There is a James and Thomas Ireland in Hutton-in-the-Forest and an Anthony Ireland in Penrith. For the females there is Elizabeth, Mabell, Dorothy, Mary and Barbara all with birth dates in the decade or two before 1662. The detailed ancestry of these individuals may frustratingly never be connected, but at least the source location is firmly established for this Ireland family for the 17th Century and possibly much earlier.

The connection to the Earle family is through the marriage of John Ireland to Jane Earl in Richmond 1907. John and Jane had a child together a year before they married, Bryan Earl. The census records for 1911 and 1921 show that as a child Bryan lived with the Ireland surname, but after a hastily arranged marriage reverted to his mothers maiden name - the name recorded on his birth certificate. Married as an Earl, the surname passed on to Bryan's descendants including the author of this website though had circumstances been different then the surname would undoubtedly have been Ireland.